The Amherst Student ran an article calculating the costs of the weekend, and taking into consideration the difference in the value of the dollar since 1965, it seems that the tradition of spending considerable sums of money has certainly lasted. In order to determine the figures, The Student calculated not only what the Prom Committee spent, but how much the fraternities contributed, because the fraternities were an integral part of the festivities and housing life at this time.
The Student reported that "The Prom Committee working with a budget of $3,200 spent about $2,800 … the total expenditure of the fraternities was … $10,608." In today's dollars, that sum was the equivalent of $76,617. But this was only the beginning. "Not content with this sum," The Student wrote, "we queried a number of Amherst students about how much they 'shelled out' … a little arithmetic shows that upwards of $25,000 was spent by the Amherst student body." Adding up all the costs resulted in a total of $38,408.12 for Prom Weekend-a whopping $219,474 in today's dollars. Although "a very rough figure," it was, nonetheless, remarkably large.
Much like today, many complained that there were far better uses for the money. Some suggestions were made that "we could march to Vietnam" or, as one student proclaimed, "that's enough for me to go ten times around the world with the Rugby team."
The weekend, just it is like today, was an attempt to celebrate the end of the year in style. The tradition is long-standing; we see that although much has changed on the Amherst campus since the mid-'60s, much has remained the same.